Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Psalm 86.11 NLT 'Teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth!' I wonder what your school teachers were like. I suspect that we all had a wide range experiences. I reflect on my own teachers. Some of them were strict, others were encouraging, a few were inspiring, some seemed to be in the wrong job, others were funny and more of them thought they were funny! Teachers vary en...

Psalm 86.8 NLT 'No pagan god is like you, O Lord. None can do what you do!' There have always been lots of gods on offer. A god is anything that calls for our commitment and devotion and in every age there has been a colourful variety of options. I once stayed with a journalist in Mumbai in India who had a remarkable variety of gods in his flat. There were pictures of many Hindu deities but Jesus...

Psalm 86.5 NLT 'O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.' I am sorry to remind you of this but, sooner or later, everything breaks down. Whether you are thinking of your health, car, bicycle, microwave, vacuum cleaner or heating system all of them will, one day, encounter problems. No one can go through life without facing these challen...

Psalm 86.1 NLT 'Bend down, O Lord, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help.' Finding peace and purpose in our lives is something that we all want, and the first step to achieving it is recognising that we need God’s help. David, the author of this psalm, was Israel’s King about 1000BC and had that experience time and again. This is clearly one of those times. He knew that, although he...

Psalm 85.8 NLT 'I listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people.' Listening is crucial to every part of life. But that doesn’t mean that it is a simple process. It requires a huge amount of thought and care so it isn’t surprising that courses in listening are widely available these days. There are essentially five stages to the listening process – rece...

Psalm 84.10 NLT 'A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.' I wonder if you’ve ever experienced home sickness. I certainly have. I loved the years I spent in India and my Indian friends couldn’t possibly have been more kind or welcoming. But there was still a deep lo...

Psalm 82.3-4 NLT 'Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people.' When I was in my 20s I lived in an Indian village for a year. I had the incredible privilege of living with a family of Dalits, who have generally been known as untouchables. Dalits form about a quarter of the In...

Luke 2.13-14 NLT "Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying, “Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased." The shepherds received the news of Jesus’ birth from a single angel who was then joined by a vast crowd of angels to sing an amazing chorus of praise. The language used recalls Job 38.7 where...

Luke 2.10-11 NLT The angel reassured the shepherds. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Saviour—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!” The angel’s message is fascinating because its content is both incredibly Jewish and yet embraces everyone. The angel makes it clear that the baby who has just bee...

Luke 2.8-9 NLT 'That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified.' It’s not very surprising that the shepherds were terrified. They were well used to facing dangers in the desert. They were constantly threatened by wolves and oth...

Luke 2.6-7 NLT 'While they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. Mary gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.' When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, they found that it was heaving with people who had come for the census which the Romans had demanded. In the Jewish law, ce...

Luke 2.4-5 NLT 'Because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He travelled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.' If you travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem these days it is a relatively easy journey. The roads are good and you should get there by car in a...

Matthew 1.22-23 NLT All of this occurred to fulfil the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” Loneliness is one of the greatest problems of our society and it is on the increase. This matters because loneliness is incredibly dangerous. It increases the risk of death b...

Matthew 1.21 NLT “And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Giving a name to a child is a huge moment for parents. If you have ever had that privilege. I am sure you will remember the conversations about the various possibilities. You will probably have thought about names that have been particularly important in your family together with...

Matthew 1.20 NLT As Joseph considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.” This account is so familiar to us that we need to take a moment to try to imagine what the experience must have been like for Joseph. In all probability he would...

Matthew 1.19 NLT "Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly." At the centre of the account of Jesus’ birth is a man about whom we know very little. Joseph was the legal father of Jesus and Matthew’s gospel begins with Jesus’ family line through Joseph. But after the birth of Jesus we meet Joseph on...

Matthew 1.16-17 NLT "Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah. All those listed above include fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah." Matthew shows here how the Old Testament has prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. He points out that there were 14 generations from the time of A...

Matthew 1.1 & 16 NLT "This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham ... Joseph was the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah." If you were writing a book about someone famous I suspect you wouldn’t start like this. But Matthew was writing his gospel for people from a Jewish background and so it was vital that he started...

Psalm 81.10-11 NLT ”For it was I, the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around.” We probably all know the feeling when someone doesn’t want us around. It’s painful. For some reason they don’t come out with it plainly and clearly, but we get the clear impression...

Psalm 80.19 NLT "Turn us again to yourself, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved." We all know that look, when someone looks at us with their full attention and warmth. The look tells us everything that we need to know – that we are welcome and that they are on our side. On three occasions in this psalm, Asaph expresses his longing that God’s...

Psalm 78.2-4 NLT "I will teach you hidden lessons from our past — stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders." In a speech in the House of Commons in 1948, Winston Churchill paraphrased Santayana when he said “...

Matthew 14.29-30 NLT So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he shouted. It was about three o’clock in the morning when this took place. The disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and had been battling with a major storm. Then suddenly a stranger appeare...

Matthew 14.23 NLT "After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone." Finally, at the end of an exhausting day, which had seen 5000 people miraculously fed, Jesus had time to be alone with his Father. There’s no doubt that he had planned for this to have happened some hours earlier but now, at last, the time has come. It’s interesting to se...

Matthew 14.17 NLT “But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” the disciples answered. Jesus had just ordered his disciples to feed the vast crowd. They were understandably overwhelmed by the challenge. How on earth were they going to do it? They pointed out the absurdity of the situation by informing Jesus that they only had five loaves and two fish. It was a complete joke! Anyone could...

Matthew 14.15-16 NLT That evening the disciples came to Jesus and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “That isn’t necessary—you feed them.” You can’t blame the disciples. They were probably exhausted trying to keep up with Jesus, who always seemed to have energy to minister t...